Glory to Glory

After I posted my blog last week, Mom’s blood pressure dropped to sixty over forty, and she was unresponsive. I made the decision to call an ambulance because I knew her condition was due to medications I had been forced to give her. (The night before she had woken up with a coughing/choking attack). Though we understand the reason she is under hospice care is because they consider her condition end stage COPD,  I still felt I must call 911. The EMTs did not go to extreme measures to save her life, but they administered an IV and within minutes she became alert and responsive. The journey continues.

There have been some difficult days and I’m sure there will be more. I assure you we do not always respond like saints, but our mission here is to provide not just a comfortable and dignified environment, but to also provide a place of prayer and praise.

We pray a lot around our house. Dad prays for a miracle, Wolter and I pray for wisdom, peace and direction, and Mom just prays. She and Dad open and finish each day with prayer, they pray over meals and then there are the spontaneous prayer sessions that erupt when we least expect it.  

Regardless of the timing our sense of the prayers remain the same. We offer our prayers and petitions at the feet of Jesus while she actually sits at His feet. Each of her prayers begin with the words, “Thank you for Calvary and the work of the cross – thank you for your grace.”

I’m not sure of all that is in Mom’s heart and head these days. We take it a day at a time. Sometimes she sits in silence and when we offer to turn something on she says no. Other times she asks for music as she reads, a good bit of time she drifts in and out of sleep.

Whenever a prayer, song or a hymn begins she lifts her hands in praise. It seems she has a deeper awareness of His presence. The longer she lives the simpler it is. We are sinful and broken and we needed a savior to save and heal us. Though she and Dad have done many works as evidence of their faith, it’s not about good works. It never has been. It’s all about the Savior for whom the work is done.


(Hospice nurse Sharon plays harp for Mom)

There is a New Testament verse that reads, 'But we all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.'

The end of the journey should be just that: from Glory to Glory. We go from a glorious awareness of Him here until we step into His glorious presence there. We begin our song of praise here, but we finish it there. Here we know only in part, but there we will know and be fully known.